is out with a rather amazing news report. It seems that India is now ready to raise unwanted baby girls in special orphanages throughout the nation. The practice of female infanticide is so widespread in India that a gender imbalance threatens the future vitality of Indian society.

The Indian government plans to set up a series of orphanages to raise unwanted baby girls in a bid to halt the widespread practice of aborting female fetuses, according to a senior government official.

Dubbed the “cradle scheme,” the plan is an attempt to slow the practice that international groups say has killed more than 10 million female fetuses in the last two decades, leading to an alarming imbalance in the ratio between males and females in India, Renuka Chowdhury, the minister of state for women and child development, told the Press Trust of India news agency in an interview published Sunday.

“What we are saying to the people is have your children, don’t kill them. And if you don’t want a girl child, leave her to us,” Chowdhury told the agency, adding that the government planned to set up a center in each regional district.

“We will bring up the children. But don’t kill them because there really is a crisis situation,” she said.

A crisis situation of massive proportions? What else could you say about the fact that more than 10 million baby girls have been killed just because they are girls? As the article explains, “Discrimination against girls stems from the low value attached to females in Indian society. Girls are seen as a burden on the family, requiring a large dowry which many poor families cannot afford. Females are generally the last to be educated or to get medical treatment.”

This is brought about by a worldview that discounts human dignity across the board, but especially with reference to girls and women. Renuka Chowdhury, the minister of state for women and child development, told the press agency:

What we are saying to the people is have your children, don’t kill them. And if you don’t want a girl child, leave her to us. . . . We will bring up the children. But don’t kill them because there really is a crisis situation.

Well, this is a crisis situation by any estimation — and it is a good thing that the Indian government is finally admitting the problem. Why did it take the deaths of 10 million girl fetuses motivate the government to do something?

The Christian worldview holds that every single human life is worthy of protection because every human being is made in the image of God — male and female. But, as the Christian worldview recedes in the West, we see the Culture of Death spreading here as well. More than 40 million of the unborn have been aborted here since 1973. Do we consider ourselves morally superior to India?

Do American abortion rights advocates base that sense of elevated morality only on the reason given for an abortion? Are they against sex-selection abortions only? One must wonder how they can make that argument with a straight face, since the movement insists that a woman should have unrestricted acccess to abortion for whatever reason she chooses — or no stated reason whatsoever.